


No Dignity

by hightechzombie



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Humour, M/M, Masturbation, nothing says lonely like sad masturbation on the sofa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:33:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23758435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hightechzombie/pseuds/hightechzombie
Summary: Sometimes Martin really hated that he never mastered the art of making suffering look cool. Some people managed to wear grief like a fancy cloak. They’d dip away the tears with a handkerchief and force a pained smile, or maybe cry, but even when they cried, they still looked good. You felt sympathy for them because their pain looked real.Wouldn’t happen to Martin.---Takes place sometime after episode 126.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 9
Kudos: 79





	No Dignity

Sometimes Martin really hated that he never mastered the art of making suffering look cool. Some people managed to wear grief like a fancy cloak. They’d dip away the tears with a handkerchief and force a pained smile, or maybe cry, but even when they cried, they still looked good. You felt sympathy for them because their pain looked real.

Wouldn’t happen to Martin. He looked at his own bloated, snot-covered face and felt like he was again fifteen. Pimply and fat, unlikeable and deeply alone. Usually he cried silently, but sometimes the sobs wrecking his body were too powerful. When mom heard him, she’d start knocking and shouting at him through the door:

“Stop with the noises! You already look like a whale, stop moaning like one! Why do you make me listen to this? Why don’t just you just SHUT UP?!”

Martin washed his face. Back in the living room, he walked past the dinner plate and lay down on the sofa. He didn’t feel like eating anymore. The microwave dinner was kind of disgusting anyway.

It unfair, you know? Some people actually lost weight when they were depressed. Martin sometimes skipped meals because he was too tired, but it all was balanced out in the end because midnight was ice cream time! Or chocolate, scone, pudding, cheesake, cake, nacho, chips time. Basically, anything that ensured that not only did he feel disgusting, but also looked the part. 

Well, what did it matter in the grand scheme of things? The apocalypse was coming for them. Perfect abs and a chiseled jaw wouldn’t have done shit against the Extinction anyway. 

Only the Lonely helped. Staying alone helped.

There came the tears again. Martin was getting sick of it. What time was it today? The sixth time he cried? Too much free time was definitely not doing him any good. Maybe he should start going into the archives during weekends as well.

This would have never happened to him a month ago. Back then, he just felt numb. It was kind of nice, actually. Martin always had too many emotions, too much bubbling inside of him. When you didn’t care, nothing could get you. 

But then Jon came back from the hospital… and so did the emotions.

It sucked meeting him. Martin had prepared himself, armored himself with contempt and loathing. Still sucked, though. It was hard to avoid his gaze, hard to bear his disappointment. Running away from him was… it was actually kind of funny. Usually it was Martin running after Jon and then was being brushed off like a nuisance. Not so nice being on the receiving end, is it Jon?

But it wasn’t really like that. Martin didn’t want to punish Jon. He already looked punished enough. Jon looked like he really needed a shoulder to lean on. But it couldn’t be Martin. It really couldn’t be him. 

Martin remembered being angry when first seeing Jon. It was silly, but it really drove him mad, cause it wasn’t fair that Jon looked so good! Sure, he gave the distinct impression of having narrowly beaten death, but eyebags and dishevelled hair had given him a dark tortured look. Obviously, Martin cared and didn’t want Jon to feel bad... but goddammit, why did he have to look hot like that? 

Martin would bet that Jon didn’t cry in the way Martin cried either. When in pain, Jon would brood over papers or look blearily into the distance, maybe even spill a tear or two in solitude. 

But frankly, Martin couldn’t muster any real indignation about Jon looking good while suffering. It just reminded him that John looked tired and in pain  _ all the time  _ lately. 

In addition, Jon looking hot all the time was not exactly helping Martin’s goal of keeping his eyes away from him!

It was so easy to find reason to break his own isolation. Easy to imagine how Jon might smile if Martin brought him tea. Just a small quiet smile. It would be enough. Or maybe Martin would ask him: “How are you, Jon?” and Jon would grimace and say something sardonic, but not unkind. They could be both happy. But of course, it was not how this all worked.

It was such a mockery of fate, that Martin finally had all he needed to win over Jon, but the end of the world just had to get in the way. Peter Lukas just popped out of the ground, said “Hello, Martin!” and then it was loneliness time.

Sometimes, Martin thought he was made for it. All the avatars kept talking about being marked from the young age, traumatized by an event that led them towards this dark path. Martin wasn’t traumatized by anything supernatural, though. He was just lonely.

That sucked in its own way, didn’t it? He was just such a loser that he managed to qualify for the loser’s club. Not as if Martin’s loneliness had been self-chosen, not like Peter’s. It was the result of knocking on hundreds of doors and none of them opening.

Enough, thought Martin. Enough with the self-loathing. This is a thought spiral and while it’s obvious why my circumstances might encourage it… it’s not productive. It’s just not productive.

That’s why Martin grabbed a remote and turned on the TV. An advertisement for soap was running. 

There was a funny statistic that the younger generations no longer watch TV. Netflix, Youtube, sure, but cable TV was terrible out of fashion. Martin was kind of an outlier there!

There was also a statistic that watching TV made people feel less lonely. Martin didn’t think any version of him, even one that didn’t fall asleep listening to the voices from the box, could feel anymore lonely than he did right now. 

It was okay. It will stop hurting eventually. The aching will fade and his heart will grow numb. The pain will throb like a phantom limb, like a neon sign through a dirty window. Then Martin will wonder if he can feel anything ever again. 

It has happened once before. It will happen again.

“We are all lonely, in the end,” said Peter. He was always kind when saying these things. “It’s best to let it happen instead of fighting it.”

It was funny to hear Peter Lukas preach at him. It was like his depression started wearing a sailor’s hat and lecturing him from a position of authority. Like an anti-therapist, working hard to undo everything Martin had done to claw himself out of self-chosen exile. 

Much like real therapy, it was surprisingly effective. 

Peter scared Martin. In part it was the murder. It was mostly the murder and the eternal damnation, yeah. The other part were the schemes, the invisible manipulations that Peter was spinning. 

But whether Peter was or wasn’t lying about Extinction, Martin couldn’t risk disobeying him. Now that Jon was out of the hospital, Peter could get  _ him _ . Just to make Martin more focused on his task, more  _ lonely _ . 

So far Peter was happy to let Jon live in peace. It made sense. Staying away from Jon was a test for Martin, as well as a way to amplify the loneliness. 

It worked like this: If there ever was a deity of Hunger, it wouldn’t whisk away all food in the world. That would be too simple. Instead, it would place the food just out of reach. Place a glass wall between you in the food. Sometimes you would smell the delicious aroma, know exactly how good it would feel in your mouth… and you’d never be able to taste. But you would hunger for it with the desperation of a starving man. 

Even when Martin didn’t see Jon, he still saw too much. Baseira would talk about him in the hallway. Sometimes Martin would walk into the archives to grab a statement and see a half-drunk, cold cup of tea.

He’d be overcome with the nauseating desire to replace it with a cup full of hot steamy tea. No one would see him. But Jon would know and Martin would know, and they would be connected.

Martin had left the room without doing a thing. Then he sat at his desk, pretending to read and successfully preventing himself from crying. It was a personal goal of his to never cry at the workplace. Last time it happened was when Elias turned his brain inside out and the second to last was when Martin was sixteen and working at a coffee shop. 

“I should get a fucking Employee of the Month medal,” said Martin. “Maybe at least a plaquet: ‘Here sits Martin, he saved the world by being sickeningly alone.’”

If he managed to save it, anyway. 

Martin sighed and turned off the TV. Then he closed his eyes, and slipped his hand down the sweatpants. He might as well do the whole depression routine. Maybe the orgasm afterglow will give enough energy to do the dishes. 

Somewhere around the time when they found that there were working for the Beholder, Martin grew rather paranoid about his porn habits. It just happened rarer and rarer. On the day that Martin found out that Jon could compel people to tell the truth, he had gone home and deleted his porn folder. Not as if Martin expected that the topic would come up in conversation or that Jon would be interested enough to ask in first place, but you know. 

There was one folder that Martin was particularly ashamed of. It was called “Archive” - a little inside joke. There, Martin saved clips where the actors could pass for Jon from certain angles. If Jon knew about this, he’d probably think it was kind of creepy and disgusting. Martin had justified it to himself that it wasn’t hurting anyone and that nobody would ever find out. Not as if there was an all seeing eye observing everything that they were doing, har har. 

As a safety precaution, Martin had begun jerking off with eyes closed. It was questionable whether it actually stopped the Eye from observing, but still. It was hard enough to get off without visual aids, and the feeling of being watched was not gonna make that task any easier. 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to most people whom Martin imagined when he closed his eyes. Was it weird? It was pretty normal, romantic even, when other people talked about realizing the full extent of their infatuation during private masturbation. But Martin always felt like he was doing something wrong, something he should feel guilty for. 

First time he masturbated to thoughts of Jon, he had spent full ten minutes washing his hands and telling himself that it was silly and shouldn’t happen again. Hell, Martin hadn’t even known at that point that he liked men. That’s why it was very easy to promise to himself that it wouldn’t happen again.

Of course, it happened again and again. A small infatuation turned into a full-blown crush. How long has it been going on? Two years? If Martin was still making appointments, then the therapist would have told him to move on. You can’t date your boss, especially if he finds you grating and incompetent. 

In one of Martin’s earliest fantasies, Jon would come personally to his desk to chew him out. It’d be a late night at the office. They’d be alone and Martin would lower his head, ears burning. Jon would be particularly vicious, come closer than usual.

“But maybe you are good for something,” Jon would growl in Martin’s fantasy and grab him by the hair. 

(Yup, not very realistic. But an “evil” Jon who misuses his privileges as a boss was a very appealing idea for Martin.)

Martin would then take Jon’s cock in his mouth. The fantasy diverged from there. Sometimes Jon would roughly fuck into him cause he didn’t care how it would feel for Martin. Sometimes Jon would be disinterested, dismissively remarking about how Martin couldn’t even get do this right. Then he’d instruct Martin how exactly to pleasure him. 

(In some ways, the fantasy was wildly unrealistic. In other ways, it was soothing to be used as a sex toy. It hurt imagining Jon being gentle and soft with him, because that would never happen in real life. At least, that’s how it seemed in the beginning.)

After Jon was done, he’d fix his shirt and say to Martin:

“We’ll discuss this in your performance review.”

(Yes, corny, and really out of character. But it set up the scene for more.)

Jon’s desk featured heavily in Martin’s fantasies. It was just right for bending someone over. Again, Jon would fuck roughly. A spur of the moment decision, with some improvised lube. Occasionally, Jon would let the tape run and force Martin to say something into. Just to humiliate him. 

Martin’s fantasies were usually like that. It felt safer when Jon had something to gain from it, when Martin could be used and abused. That way, Martin didn’t have to look good, be funny or have something interesting to say. He just had take that cock and not complain about anything else. 

After the first encounter with Jane Prentiss, when Jon had offered his bed in the Archives, it had opened a whole new world of mushy romantic fantasies in Martin’s head. First of all, it was  _ Jon’s _ bed in which he was sleeping. Jon had muttered something about a second change of sheets and a laundromat back then and Martin had nodded.

The next weeks, Martin slept in the place that smelled like _ Jon _ . Martin would burrow his head into the pillow and pretending he rested into the nook of Jon’s shoulders, breathing the same smell in a close embrace. He’d even fantasize about Jon accidentally coming into the room and falling asleep next to him. They’d lie there cuddling and then Jon would wake up in the morning, all embarrassed and with a messy beautiful hairstyle.

Then came trauma bonding during Jane Prentiss’ attack. It was absolutely terrifying and Martin never wanted to see Jon covered in dead worms ever again. But that conversation in the closet was one of Martin’s most treasured memories. It helped to remember that Jon did care and he was vulnerable and scared like all of them. He just wasn’t very good at showing it.

Then came the paranoia. That was not fun. And the brutal murder for which Elias had framed Jon. Not fun at all. Martin had worried himself sick, even lost some weight, as unlikely as that sounds.

Then Jon returned, stayed distant, then changed his mind and apologized, then the Unknowing. And then Jon was as good as dead for six long months, lying in coma at the hospital.

The masturbation fantasies varied throughout these times. Sometimes there was gentle lovemaking, sometimes the old fantasy of his boss boning him against a desk. When Martin couldn’t bear thinking about Jon, he’d imagine some anonymous dark haired guy fucking him. But it didn’t matter because all these faceless figures wore Jon’s face in the end. There was no escaping him. 

There were so many words for what Martin felt. Love. Affection. Infatuation. Obsession. Lust. It could be a harmless crush, it could a form of escapism, it could be anything at all. How many times had they talked to each other? Really talked? Five times? Or even less?

It was all a pipe dream. A fantasy in Martin’s head, one he had carefully built over years. Even if Jon decided to join it, it didn’t mean it would become real. It could just break under the weight of so much reality.

Sometimes Martin masturbated to the real Jon. They’d be in the Archives. They would lean in but it would not be a real kiss, just a brush of lips from which they would pull away. Both of them were willing to be gentle, to be kind, to whisper soft words and brush each other’s hair. But they wouldn’t do it.

They would end up in bed. Jon be on top, riding Martin’s cock. An unusual position, but lately Martin could not imagine Jon taking charge of anyone. That’s why Martin would take the lead and hope for something. Something that could transform them, something that could make their love real. 

But fear curled in Martin’s belly. He feared that Jon would move up and down, absentmindedly and barely present. Look at me, thought Martin. Just look at me!

Jon wouldn’t look. He’d be in his head, chasing nightmares. Even when Martin fucked harder, even when Martin would grab Jon’s head and forced him to turn his way, their faces inches away from each other…

Jon still wouldn’t see him. Jon would see the oceans of darkness, agony driving nails through a body, a cry choking dead in the chest... the hundred crimes for which there would be no justice or retribution. But there would be a witness.

Please, Jon, please, please, please… 

Jon would eventually snap out of it, his eyes shift and focus on Martin’s face. 

He’d look at him. But he wouldn’t  _ see _ Martin. 

Martin gasped for breath, as if waking from a nightmare, while the orgasm reached its climax. Waves of terror and guilty pleasure went through his body and Martin thought: “No, no, please don’t…”

He didn’t know with whom he was pleading. It was insufferable to lie spread out on the sofa anymore, that’s why he curled up in a ball. His hand was sticky. Martín was making a mess. 

Martin didn’t want to be seen anymore. If anyone saw him, they’d turn away. There was nothing good about him. His grief was black and foul, his loneliness was the shrill noise of broken telephone dial. 

Even death was not an option for him.

Back in the beginning, Martin was plagued by the question whether the Lonely required anything extra except for being alone all the time. Masturbation was a hot topic that Martin absolutely could not ask Peter about. 

Martin shouldn’t have worried. Thinking of Jon didn’t bring them closer. It just brought them further apart until the abyss grew so big, that it could swallow the world.

Martin was made for the Lonely. Everyone was made for the Lonely.

**Author's Note:**

> A few things:
> 
> 1\. I began really liking Martin only after episode 158. Never underestimate true slow burn.  
> 2\. Martin was almost as much traumatized by working at the coffee shop as he was by the Magnus Archives. He was sixteen, stuttered, and the more people shouted at him, the more he dropped things. Not a good time was had.  
> 3\. Martin knew that he was gay in his childhood, then he decided he was not, then he was again. The magical powers of self-loathing and denial!  
> 4\. After the fic had ended, Martin had a cry and then did the dishes. Next, he watched a 12 second video about a cat which made him chuckle and doubt that depression was real. it was enough of a pick-me-up that he went to sleep and spent the rest of the night thinking about Extinction and the heat death of the universe.


End file.
